The Tea Party's Crashing Us Now

Two different blog entries at LRC, here and here, complain about the Tea Party movement. Ostrowsky says more or less that Palin's an embicile with no real program, and Rockwell says the movement looks like it still really really really likes the government's little wars.

I myself didn't watch very much of the Tea Party convention on C-SPAN. I became immediately uninterested when they started by pledging allegiance to the flag. They pick a name for themselves that harks back to a time when "patriotism" meant rebellion against political authority, and here they are saying "One Nation...Indivisible". If these guys were in the original Tea Party then we'd have pictures of the Queen on our money today.

I really can't say I know every single reason I dislike them. That would require examining them closely, and I can't stomach that. Judging off the general impression they give, though, I can say that they don't impress me. Here's something from some Facebook comments I made earlier.

"My criticisms of the Tea Partygoers are out of principle and out of practicality. I think a non-interventionist foreign policy is more important than conservative economic policy (mass theft is less horrendous than mass murder). The Tea Partygoers are all the rage about the words "fiscal conservatism", but as a movement they don't seem to be particularly against reductions in US military commitments abroad. After all, fiscal conservatism doesn't make much sense without reductions in military adventurism. And, if they had a mass conversion to belief in individual rights against the security state, I haven't noticed it. There's nothing wrong with fiscal conservatism, but it has to be consistent, and it is not the end-all-be-all of right reform.

"The movement won't be able to make any dents unless they offer something that would appeal to left-of-center voters and which isn't offered by the Obama regime. That can (and should) include calls to reduce military action and spending, and calls to repeal the "Patriot" Act. The Tea Party movement isn't perceived as doing either of these, and so it's thought of as just a bunch of right-wing extremists. Fiscal conservatism is fine and good; but voters won't buy it if it doesn't look digestible.

"I'm also a little resentful because there already is a political party called Boston Tea.

"But maybe some good will result from this, and through the efforts of libertarian conservatives more and more Tea Partygoers would be drawn to a more pro-peace and pro-freedom platform.
"True, there's no such thing as a perfect movement. But the Tea Party movement isn't even adequate - yet. As it is, their platform is something I can't put my name behind in good conscience, and their platform and image are not going to get their candidates the primaries *and* get swing voters *and* keep party loyalty in the districts where we need them. Maybe they'll get better, but I don't think they're even good enough yet."

Consent of the Governed

When my brother called me this morning and said "Happy Secession Day, I'm expecting a blog post from you," I had no choice but to accept my writing assignment with joy. And it wasn't as if I could pretend that I didn't know what he wanted me to write about. Today is that day when we all celebrate a secession without calling it a secession. Believe it or not, the signing of the Declaration of Independence was an act by which some people seceded from a Union.

Yes, it was a secession in every respect. A bunch of radical liberals decided that the taxes imposed on them were so burdensome and that the government over them was so despotic, that neither the taxes nor the government that inflicted them were binding. "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed," they reasoned, and since the Crown's intrusions lacked their consent, the Crown and its intrusions had no right over them. But had our forbears more principle, and had they drunk a few more pints of that American spirit, they would have demanded a little more (or, shall we say, a lot less) than "Free and Independent States".

Now is that all-American holiday when we celebrate the "birth of a nation," and in the spirit of this season we're supposed to observe everything American, including the beers and burgers which we selected from among a variety of beers and burgers for best fulfilling our needs and desires, and which we bought from a store that we selected from among a variety of stores for best fulfilling our needs and desires. We all know that to be free is to be free to choose. And deep down inside we all know that this includes the freedom to shop at Whole Foods if you don't like Safeway, and to shop at Kohl's if you can't afford or simply don't like the selections at Gap, and also to not shop at all when you simply don't want to shop.

Freedom, as it's best understood, is being allowed to choose one and not another, or none at all. This kind of freedom is the highest expression of Western values, and the extent to which we honor it is the degree of America's beauty. This freedom to choose something else protects us from the stagnant and mundane.

In my freshman year of college I became concerned about the treatment of animals, and about the environmental effects of factory farming, and I started to reduce the amount of meat that I eat. Today I am a vegan -- I don't eat any food derived from an animal, not even milk, cheese, or eggs. Thanks to the freedom to choose one and not another, I am able to choose meat substitutes instead of meat. Thanks to freedom of conscience, I can mold my life according to my own chosen values, so long as I allow others the same freedom. Thanks to supply and demand, suppliers have recognized the convictions I choose to live by, and now produce and distribute goods that accord with the values I embrace. Aren't freedom of conscience and capitalism such lovely things?

But I'm not free to live entirely by my own values. Money is taken by force from people who share my convictions, and given to factory farmers, animal experimenters, abortionists, and war profiteers. If I were truly free, I would be free to not fund any of those things. Not only that -- if I were truly free, I would be free to choose which government, if any, to pay taxes to and obey. If we believe in a free market in clothing and food -- if we believe we should be free to shop in one store and not another, without having to move -- then why don't we also believe in a free market in government? If I were free in the truest sense of the word, as I should be, then I would be free to buy protection from one goverment and not another, without being forced out of my home. If consent of the governed is such a big deal, then why do the California and U.S. governments lay claim to my body and my pocketbook without my consent?

The Unconstitutionality of the Pledge

Sometime near the beginning of my senior year at UCSD, I found a table on Library Walk for College Republicans and asked when their next meeting was. I decided to attend at least one meeting, since after all, I am a registered Republican, and in a handful of issues I am very, very conservative. I was also a Ron Paul supporter, and I was anxious to know how well the mainstream right was progressing in issues like war and political authority.

So I arrived on the night they were meeting, and the very first thing we did after reorganizing the chairs to form a big circle was to stand and face a flag that a man had pulled from his bag, put our right hands over our hearts, and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. I myself abstained from placing my hand over my heart and from saying a single word of the pledge, though I did stand out of some combination of respect and fear.

There are some words in the Pledge of Allegiance that I have a moral opposition to. Granted, I am a little put off by the phrase "under God". Does it mean that God chose this nation to be better than all the others? Does it mean that everything our leaders do happens to be condoned by God? Does it mean that acceptance of God's authority necessitates acceptance of the U.S. government's authority? Does it mean that we all have a national duty to worship a Biblical God? But that isn't what bothers me most. I can live with a little religious ambiguity. What bothers me most, and what I find to be inconsistent with both the United States Constitution and fundamental moral principles, is the phrase "On Nation, Indivisible".

The Right to Secede is a basic human right that belongs not just to the states, but to counties and cities within the states, to neighborhoods and to households, and to mere individuals. It was the Right to Secede that our forefathers claimed when they wrote: "it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another". The Declaration of Independence was in every sense a declaration of the right to secede. When a man insists that we are bound perpetually in union with "one nation, indivisible", he denies the very principle on which our nation is supposed to have been founded. He basically says that we should stay loyal to the government no matter how high its taxes, unnecessary its wars, or brutal its so-called "justice".

The U.S. Constitution puts no limit on the states' or the people's Right to Secede, and so we can infer from the Tenth Amendment that the Right to Secede, which the Constitution does not prohibit to the states, is reserved for the states or the people. The Right to Secede is then a Constitutional right. Any law or government action prohibiting secession simply because it is secession is a denial of a Constitutional freedom, and any statement in denial of the Right to Secede is a statement in denial of the Constitution. Of course, the Constitution doesn't have any moral authority anyway, but it is nice to see statists trapped in their own words. If they are patriots, then surely they love "freedom" and the Constitution. If they love those two things, then surely they must give the Constitution the meaning that is most conducive to freedom. And if they do that, then they must acknowledge that no body of people is bound for all eternity to bow to some organization that calls itself "the United States Government".

Individual Sovereignty, Free Association, and the Inalienability of Will are three fundamental moral principles that undergird (or at least, they SHOULD undergird) our laws. It wouldn't make much sense to say on the one hand that every one of us is endowed with certain inalienable rights, among them Liberty, while on the other hand saying that a man is bound to stay in a relationship that he no longer wants to be in. A man who no longer wants to attend the Catholic Church shouldn't be forced to attend it. A woman who no longer wants to live with or have sex with her husband shouldn't be forced to live with or have sex with him. The bottom line is that we shouldn't be forced to do things that we don't want to do, even if we used to like doing them, and to force a man to do something he no longer wants to do is to make a slave of him. The fact that a man used to love his government is no reason to force him to continue paying his taxes, or to obey other laws that he finds abhorrent or intrusive. Today, many people are forced to go along with and pay for things they don't approve of. "Political rape" is a good word for it. And it is this rape that self-styled "patriots" defend when they cover their hearts and say "One Nation, Indivisible".